Client management guide | OneHQ support

Overview

A client in OneHQ is more than a name and an ABN — it's the whole relationship. Every call, email, message, signed document, job and AML check for that client sits on the one record, so anyone picking up the file sees the full picture in seconds.

Your clients don't get typed in twice, either. They flow in from the systems you already run and stay in step on their own, so the list you work from is always the current one.

Where clients come from

Your clients live in XPM (Xero Practice Manager) — your source of record — and OneHQ syncs them in automatically. Add a client in XPM and they appear here on the next sync, with their obligations and relationships already in place. No double entry, no import to run.

New clients can also come straight through OneHQ's client-intake form — a secure link a prospective client fills in themselves, which creates them in XPM for you. Either way, XPM ends up holding the record.

Because XPM owns the identity details — name, ABN, date of birth, address — OneHQ shows them but keeps them read-only here. That's deliberate: the two systems can never drift, and you always know which one to change.

Groups

Most clients aren't a single entity — they're a family or a business with a trading company, a trust, a couple of individuals and maybe an SMSF. OneHQ keeps those related entities together as a group, so you open one place and see the whole relationship rather than hunting down each structure on its own.

Group membership follows your XPM structure, so it's right from the start and stays right as things change.

One view of every client

This is where OneHQ earns its name. On a single client record you see, in one timeline:

Every call to or from the office, and every call a staff member made
Every email and SMS, in either direction
Every document you sent to sign, and when it came back signed
Every job you're doing or have finished for them
Their AML status, and where a new client is up to in onboarding

When a client rings about the ATO letter they got this morning, whoever answers can see it was sent, see the recent history, and know why they're calling — before the call is even transferred.

Access is scoped

A client's name is practice-wide — reception can find anyone who calls — but their detail opens only for the staff allocated to them. So the whole firm works from one shared system, and each client's information still stays properly walled to the people who work on them.

Every staff member gets a Mine view: just their clients, their jobs, their work. Access follows the way you've allocated the client, and a partner can be walled off from a file entirely where they need to be.

Onboarding new clients

New clients arrive with a New Clients checklist that tracks each one through the steps of coming on board, so nobody slips through with a job half-set-up.

1

Obligations

Set what the client is due for — BAS, tax returns, and the rest — and OneHQ turns those into the jobs that need doing.

2

Identity and AML

Confirm who the client is and run the checks you're required to, all against the same record.

3

Tax file number

Capture the TFN into OneHQ's secure vault, so the last piece is in place and the client is ready to work.

A new client stays on everyone's queue until they're allocated to a staff member — so the work of setting them up is shared, not stuck with whoever happened to add them.

Frequently asked questions

Add them in XPM and they sync into OneHQ on their own — that's the source of record, so you're never keeping two lists in step by hand. Or send a prospective client the intake form: they fill it in, and it creates the client in XPM for you.

You archive a client rather than delete one — and when a client is archived in XPM, OneHQ archives them automatically. A client with real history — jobs, journals, AML matters, access grants — can't be deleted at all; OneHQ refuses, so the record and everything on it are never lost.

Archiving keeps the relationship on record while marking the client as no longer active. It's the safe move whenever you're tempted to remove someone.

They stay fully searchable — so if an old client rings, you can still find them and everything you ever did for them — but they're clearly flagged as archived so they never clutter your live client list.

Yes. Your practice can add its own custom fields and columns to client records, so the details that matter to the way you work are captured alongside everything OneHQ tracks by default.